December 06, 2016

Welcome to the FOIA blog - if it's your first time here, please feel free to browse the hundreds of posts that have accumulated over the past decade. Hopefully, you'll find something of interest to you.

For those that don't know me, I'm a Washington, D.C. based attorney who has practiced FOIA and other government information laws for the past 25 years - both in and out of the government. My law practice website can be located here. If you, your law firm, trade association or company has a FOIA need, please reach out to me at infoprivacylaw@yahoo.com.

December 02, 2016

JDSupra has this on a FOIA request for a study commissioned by the FEC on weaknesses in its digital infrastructure. Parts of the study, which the FEC says would be a blueprint to its networks were found to be exempt under the FOIA. Noteworthy is the fact that the document was found to be a law enforcement document under the threshold of FOIA exemption 7.

December 01, 2016

The Associated Press reports that releasing Food Stamp Revenues pursuant to a FOIA request will not result in a competitive harm to grocery stores participating in the program. The Argus Leader brought the lawsuit which resulted in a rare FOIA trial earlier this year. The government has used the competitive harm prong of Exemption 4 for years to withhold data it believed would harm competition but the federal judge in this case found the harm to be a speculative rather than real harm and ordered release.

November 30, 2016

Open the Government has this press release stating its pleasure that Congress has stripped the FOIA exemptions that were placed into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2017. This is not the first time that this has happened with the annual NDAA. Basically the Defense Department attempts to get the FOIA Exemptions placed into the NDAA (rather than going through the proper committees for FOIA in both the House and the Senate) and then following outcry by the public as well as some in Congress, the exemptions are stripped from the final NDAA.

November 29, 2016

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has decided to stay internal in its search for a new Director for the Office of Government and Information Services (OGIS). NARA has named Alina Semo who is currently the agency's Director of Litigation to become the third Director of OGIS. FCW has more here.

November 22, 2016

The Department of Homeland Security has been ordered to pay attorney fees in a FOIA cast that began in 2012 - Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court found that the plaintiff, EPIC, substantially prevailed as the agency released thousands of pages of material due to the lawsuit. More can be found here.

November 10, 2016

The American Society of Access Professionals (of which I serve as Past President) is holding a training in D.C. on Dec. 6 entitled "Advanced Information Governance Training." It's a great program that will cover Records Management, the Privacy Act and other issues that are close to and related to the FOIA. For more information and registration, click here.

November 02, 2016

History News Network reports that the CIA has now released Volume V of its Bay of Pigs History. The CIA had previously won FOIA litigation that allowed this material to be withheld because it believed this volume was a draft that had never been finalized and was protected by FOIA Exemption 5. However, recent FOIA legislation makes any material 25 years old not eligible for protection under the deliberative process privilege of Exemption 5. Thus, once the legislation went into effect, the National Security Archive requested the material again and gained its release.

November 01, 2016

The FBI has released and touted on its twitter account files on Marc Rich who was pardoned by Bill Clinton at the end of his presidency. It is not clear why this was done one week before the Presidential election. Politico has more on this here.

October 20, 2016

The Department of Justice has published its guidance on the fee restrictions imposed on agencies by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016. Basically, if agencies fail to respond to requesters within the statutory period they have to give up on collecting certain fees, including search fees.